HPE Nimble Storage Reviews

• Nimble InfoSight is an extremely powerful and useful tool. We log in daily to look at any new alerts, mostly ones that have been cleared without us needing to do anything, as well as using it as a capacity management tool and executive dashboards to present information to our senior management team.
• Other than InfoSight, Nimble snapshotting and replications, as well as the zero-byte cloning, are invaluable to us as a company and has greatly improved our offerings to clients over our previous storage vendor.
• We also like the new VMVision. This grabs stats from our entire VMware environment and allows us to troubleshoot all levels of our environment in one view. This helps to diagnose where the issues lie, either storage, network or the hosts themselves. This has been absolutely invaluable when we have separate teams managing each part.

We supply hourly (or more frequent) snapshots on our private hosted clients. Under the previous vendor’s arrays, there was large management overhead to keep these working.

Since switching to Nimble arrays, we have not only been able to keep triple the amount of snapshots as standard, using, on average, around 70% less space than keeping 8 on the previous arrays, but the management overhead to keep these going has dropped down to about five minutes a month. Now, using InfoSight, we can see at a glance what we have.

There is not a lot of room for improvement. All the items that we wanted to have implemented when we first started using Nimble arrays were either already on their road map, or added after listening to us, and all bar one have now been fully implemented.

These included:

• Active Directory authentication for logging into the management of the array.
• Full audit logging of all actions taken on the array.
• Full VMware implementation for managing the arrays. This has and will continue to save us a lot of time.

We have now been using Nimble Storage arrays for almost four years. We started with two arrays and now have 16, and support a further eight at client sites.

We have never had any stability issues. The Nimble arrays have survived an awful lot within our environment. We now have 16 arrays and other than a single hard drive failure and a precautionary controller swap (predictive analysis from InfoSight flagged a potential issue, so Nimble replaced the controller rather than risk downtime), the Nimble arrays have been our most reliable hardware.

We have never encountered scalability issues. Using InfoSight to help plan capacity, we know way in advance what we will need to increase performance or capacity. When we need to either increase capacity or performance, all upgrades are performed so simply and with zero down time.

The technical support from Nimble is second to none. Whenever we have called them, we get straight through to a technician, who does not follow a script designed to frustrate you and waste all your time. They listen to your problem, and what, if anything, you have already tried. Then they help and most of the time, any issues are resolved there and then on a single call. Sometimes we have called them simply because we do not understand something, or even a new feature that we wanted to use, and they are happy to dedicate time to us to explain and show us how to do what we want. We have never had an ongoing ticket with Nimble other than when they are awaiting a response or action from us, that we can only perform during weekends.

We used to use a different storage vendor. The two main reasons we changed were the terrible levels of support we received from the previous company and the arrays' performance. The support was important because once, when we had an issue with an array, we had a six-hour outage and the issue prevented DR as well as production environments working. The support was terrible, and it took months to finally resolve the issue.

Performance-wise, the arrays we had were simply not sufficient for our growing environment and the needs of our newer larger clients coming into our infrastructure. This, coupled with the management overhead required to simply keep the plates spinning on these arrays, prompted us to find a more-reliable, better-performing partner with a better support ethos.

When we first started speaking to Nimble, they sent us two trial devices so we could truly perform a PoC that matched our planned deployment. They also sent a senior engineer along for a day to assist us in setting it up. The engineer ended up not really being needed as the array setup is very simple. There are two methods, both shown to us by the engineers.

Since the initial setup, all arrays have been configured by my in-house technicians and usually an array is fully configured, and up and running within half an hour (this doesn’t include time to get it in our racks and patched). After accidentally shipping our arrays to the wrong sites, we were able to easily and remotely talk others through the reconfiguration.

The pricing for the arrays is very transparent. There is one cost for the array, and another for support. There are zero licensing costs. Whatever you pay for the array, you get all features included with full access to their InfoSight, knowledge base and downloads. It’s a very simple model, which our finance team love.

When we went to market, the team already had a good knowledge of other vendors, having used a good variety of arrays between us. Nimble were the first new array we got in to test. They blew us away with their performance and their support. The personal touch they gave us really helped, too. They took the time to learn about our needs and our environment. It was easy to decide not to go to anyone else.

If you’re looking to implement, ask for a trial; Nimble have been very accommodating with us and others. Their products speak for themselves and will show that the figures they post are actually lower than the performance you can get out their arrays. Speak to any Nimble client. There are lot that are happy to take reference calls. This alone speaks volumes for them as a company.

• Easy-to-implement snapshot technology
• Replication included with no need for additional licensing

In addition to exceptional performance and reliability, it covers, "for free", all the needs our primary backup system cannot provide due to costly licensing.

The product is near perfect, but there is always room for further development; maybe, more automation in snapshot management.

I have used Nimble Storage for about three years.

We have not had any stability issues.

We have not had any scalability issues.

Technical support is excellent.

We had multiple storage solutions that simply got to their EOL.

Setup was relatively simple, even with the very first Bonjour installer.

Our last purchase took place three years ago. I cannot advise on today's market.

I joined the company after the decision has been made. An external IT provider assisted with making this decision.

Nimble was pretty unique at the time with their new CASL architecture. There are many more products built on the same principles today on the market. So, as usual, shop around before making this strategic decision.

The built-in performance profiles have made tweaking settings for different uses (SQL log files, SQL data files, VMware datastores, etc.) extremely simple. The built-in profiles are more than enough for most implementations, and if you need to create a custom performance profile, the process is simple and well documented. The analytics available via Infosight (The online Nimble support portal) are extremely well written and useful too. In particular, I find the analytics extremely useful when tracking down causes of latency that occasionally crop up and affect processing.

The Nimble SANs, as part of an overall move from standalone servers to a combined virtual infrastructure, have allowed my client to be much more responsive to their clients. The client is a SaaS provider that does large analysis/predictive modeling for the retail market. The previous hardware setup had database processes running for 14 hours or more, creating long turn around times for users. The new servers, running on the faster Nimble storage, allowed processing times of two hours or less to be achieved, allowing for faster results, as well as the ability to process more datasets concurrently, servicing more customers.

While I was not present for the sizing discussions, I believe there was some lack of discovery in selecting the model and features for my client. Even though the flash size on the array was doubled from Nimble's initial recommendation, the SAN still has latency issues during the largest dataset imports, due to CPU limitations on the SAN model that presales had recommended for this client. Certainly not the end of the world, and it can be fixed with an upgrade, but it was somewhat frustrating for my clients. I suspect estimations were used as to what the expected load would be, without a full understanding of the data processing being performed.

I originally installed one of these SANs for a customer just over three years ago. Since then, two additional SANs (same model, features and capacity, have since been added).

Deployment was great. The web configuration was extremely easy (and has gotten easier with every major release). Network configuration, utilizing Juniper QFX 5100 10gb switches, was simple too. All Nimble required was jumbo frames and enough network ports of each speed, 1gb and 10gb, for data and management.

The initial SAN that I installed has been extremely stable. The second of the three SANs has had occasional issues with a controller crashing, eventually leading to replacement of one of the controller heads. Failover was seamless each time it happened though, and we were able to keep working with no loss in performance (one of the few advantages of an active/passive array). Support replaced the faulty controller after appropriate testing and troubleshooting, and the problem hasn't recurred.

Yes and no. The SAN chosen was not ideal for the workload found, but growing in breadth, expanding the load across multiple arrays (with and without Group configuration) was very simple and fast, making use of the built-in replication to copy data. It is also easy to expand vertically via upgrading the controllers, though my clients chose not to do it.

Customer service with Nimble has been great every time I've dealt with them. They've always been very responsive and friendly to deal with. I definitely have appreciated the experience of dealing with Nimble Customer Service.

The technical support at Nimble is stellar. The analytics available via the Infosight web portal are extremely detailed, and yet well laid out and easy to peruse. In addition, the portal is regularly upgraded, with additional information, new views, and easier navigation. If the analytics there aren't sufficient, though, technical support is always happy to provide whatever additional help is required, including taking the time to do deep analysis of all settings in the environment (ie, Nimble and VMware settings, or Nimble and Windows settings) to ensure that things are configured optimally.

This particular environment was all standalone servers and storage previously. Decision was made to move to shared storage to support movement from standalone servers to a VMware cluster on Cisco UCS blades.

Initial setup was extremely easy. There was a Windows app for initial configuration to get the SAN configured on the network for management, and then subsequent work (volume creation, snapshot schedules, etc) is all web based and extremely easy.

I implemented these SANs personally, and did not make use of a vendor team.

It's hard to say, since it was a complete change in the datacenter going from

Licensing is dead simple and not a concern on this product, as all features are included. SANs are purposely CPU limited in a particular model, so be aware that even if you have enough flash for all your typical needs, you may hit a hard CPU limit on performance before you run out of flash. Luckily, head upgrades are easy and fully supported, allowing movement up to faster models.

I was not part of the initial hardware selection. My client was working with a VAR to choose and obtain the hardware for a data center refresh. During this process, it eventually worked out that I took over the complete data center refresh project, from design to deployment.

1. CASL makes use of hybrid disks to retrieve frequently used data from a set of flash drives while storing actual data to high capacity SAS drives.
2. Zero Copy Clone saves storage space by updating only changed blocks to the cloned copy.
3. In-line Compression reduces the amount of space taken up by data without impacting performance.
4. Very Efficient Replication – Only replicates changed blocks which eliminates the need for expensive compression/dedup devices such as Riverbed.
5. Instantaneous snapshots provides a backup dataset of an entire server or the volume that can be restored or used to retrieve data or clone another server
6. Encryption – Ability to encrypt the entire SAN or selected volumes to protect data at rest which meets many government requirements and security requirements.
7. Easy setup, GUI interface and command line tools to administer the SAN.
8. InfoSight provides access to call history, historical performance, updates, performance metrics for virtual environment, KB articles, Nimble community, all for free – very valuable site.
9. Excellent Support Technicians – support techs are very knowledgeable and provides quick and efficient solution. They not only know Nimble SAN but are also very knowledgeable about virtual environments/technologies, switches, fiber, databases, applications and other networking devices that are involved in making a cloud technology.
10. Full redundancy makes all the parts hot swappable and expandable.
11. Grouping SANS and moving volumes between the SAN while the data is in active use on the servers – without any downtime.
12. No licensing for individual features – everything is included.

We have a small datacenter with Nimble Storage SANs that replicates to Nimble Storage SAN at our remote Disaster Recovery location. We are able to replicate every two hours and some of the tests we have done shows very good data integrity upon recovery at the DR location. Along with virtual servers and Nimble Storage, DR is much easier now.

Over a year ago, Nimble was available with either iSCSI connectivity or Fiber. Controllers can be upgraded or replaced with either of the connectivity interfaces. But, a combination of iSCSI and Fiber unit will provide flexibility in connecting SAN with existing network switches or fiber switches which can reduce overall cost and help with connecting high IO devices to the fiber interface.

Not at all. It’s been up and running ever since. We have had a few hard drive failures. Support actually calls us to let us know that there is a problem and a replacement part is on the way. It arrives in less than 4 hours. If we unplug a wire or perform maintenance on switches, Nimble support gets all the alerts and they proactively contacts us to see if there are any issues. We also receive a call from our Service Engineer to check on the health of the device and whenever there are any updates to the software.

We have expanded cache on one of the SAN which was very easy to do without any downtime.

9.9999 on a scale of 1-10 (1=worst, 10=best).

We had and EMC SAN in the past which took up a lot of space and required regular maintenance from a service technician including several downtimes.

Initial setup can be done using a Nimble setup client or via the console in about 5 easy steps.

If you are looking for a scalable, easy, performance, expandable SAN which provides all the great features without charging you licensing fees for all these useful features, go with Nimble Storage.

Yes, EMC, NetApp, Simplivity and Violin.

You will be up and running in an hour. Very easy steps to setup and five clicks to setup volumes, replication, etc.

1. Simplified storage administration

A dedicated storage administrator is no longer needed. All of our engineers have attended the one-day training and has the knowledge how to handle the Storage Systems. With our former SAN systems we had to have an external contractor doing part time administration for us due to the complexity. Now we can easily handle the Storage systems ourselves.

2. Very efficient adaptive flash technology

Even without having hundreds of rotating disks like we had in our former SAN system or having to buy an All-flash Storage, we get predictable and low latency numbers for all of our Storage Systems.

3. Simple snapshot management

Managing Snapshots through Volume collections and Protection Plans it’s easy to make sure new volumes get the appropriate replication and snapshot plan applied, which is easy to maintain and change for all volumes. The overview of used storage for snapshots and the ease of use when cloning a snapshot is remarkable compared to legacy Storage products.

4. Central monitoring and health check via the Nimble InfoSight

The InfoSight portal gives us an overall overview of all our Storage Systems and their volumes, snapshots and protection. InfoSight collects data and creates both automatically generated tickets for any problems or risk of problems as well as predictions of storage use based on usage trends. This helps us a lot avoiding anything from volume protection configuration mishaps to prediction on storage outage.

Increased administrative simplicity and predictable performance.

• Improved snapshot overview in array management GUI.
• Possibility to apply centralized policies across multiple systems.

Close to a year. In total we're running about ten systems.

One uptime related firmware bug, which was possible to work around and fixed in a later release.

No, not so far.

We rate the support as very knowledgeable in the product platform.

Yes, the switch was made to gain a less complex design with regards to setup and administration.

The initial setup was very simple and after one day of education all tech staff were comfortable with the platform.

One benefit with the Nimble Storage platform is that is doesn’t contain any software licenses. All functionality comes built-in to the platform.

We compared both traditional vendors as NetApp and HPE, as well as up-comers like Pure Storage, Violin, SolidFire, Microsoft Storage Server and others.

Embrace simplicity – no more in-house deployed admin tools or tricky CLI GUI’s, just a simple and understandable web interface.

Depending on which product platform you are about to replace – you will either just gain a far better and predictable performance or a journey where you will have to leave the comfort of having a multi-protocol NAS into NFS and OR SMB file servers using Nimble block storage in the backend.

Easy to configure and view information of the system's health.

We do not need a dedicated staff member to handle the system we deploy. A regular infrastructure person that attends the Nimble training course will be able to handle the system.

Less manpower overhead to manage the storage.

Scalability, see below.

The company has been using Nimble Storage for three years.

We haven't had any issues.

We're not able to increase space on a small scale, each increase is pretty big.

Good and responsive.

Simple, it can be setup and ready to use within the same business day of delivery.

Pricing is decent.

It depends on your infrastructure specialist, the very technically advanced specialists will prefer something that is not so user friendly. They would prefer more configuration options where only people with the technical know-how will be able to look after the system. Nimble is very easy to work with. Simple technical skilled personnel will be able to handle the system.

• Hybird configuration
• SSD Cache

These features keep the cost per IO and Gig low while giving very good performance. We have multiple database servers on the SAN that require low latency for optimal performance. This configuration allows us to run the database without over allocating memory to them.

Eliminated all IO bottlenecks, reduced from 6 SANs to 1.

Admin interface can be slow.

Two years.

No problems.

No issues scaling.

Support is great, they understand that they can’t live in a bubble. They understand virtualization and other applications.

Yes, Dell EqualLogic. Cost per IO and Gig. Stability.

Very straightforward, up in running and in testing first day.

It is straightforward, no hidden costs.

Yes, Dell, EMC, Hitachi, NetApp, Pure Storage.

If you test it yourself, it is clear how it just beats every other product hands down.

• Data Protection is superb with downstream DR Nimble arrays.
• Confidence in support and not being afraid to keep up to date.

• Simplicity, ease of upgrade of software (no downtime)
• Performance Integration with Commvault
• InfoSight reporting
• Support – World Class
• The Web GUI interface is easy to use and self-explanatory. From the Web GUI you can register the array plugin to vCenter and from within the VMWare Client and the Web Client you have array integration to allow you to Clone Snapshots and present the clone to the ESXi hosts in a couple of mouse clicks. This feature allows VM power users with the appropriate permissions (set in vCenter) to Clone, Snapshot, Expand, delete and even change the Nimble Protection (Snapshot) schedule without needing array logon credentials or needing to go onto the array Web GUI. Commvault recognizes the Nimble arrays through it’s API so we can trigger app consistent snapshots for various products like MS SQL, Oracle, My SQL,Exchange …. The list is expansive. Nimble do provide Exchange and MS SQL out of the box also. There is also a Nimble Connection Manager for VMware (NCM) that automatically set the Path Selection Policy optimized for VMware ESXi/Nimble performance.

• Web GUI should be HTML5.
• Use smaller form factor disk to provide more spindles. Streaming Backup I/O overnight would dent performance if we were a 24*7 business. Most of our workload is 07:30 -18:30.

No.

No, but the SSD cache could do with increasing on some of our system. That’s a financial (Bean Counter) decision.

The best support ever. They will even assist if the problem lies with Hyper-V, VMware and networking. This is why I don’t think you can go wrong with Nimble!

• NetApp, EMC, Dell EqualLogic.
• NetApp relies on lots of disk and was a nightmare to keep up to date. Updating was a major project when it happened.
• NetApp? To complicated and the extras like snap manager for Exchange very expensive. The others? Not much experience of EMC or EqualLogic.

Really simple.Nimble asks you various questions about IP addresses and then you get a pre-installation checklist. If you didn’t have a clue they’d guide you on the phone initially and then do a WebEx session to get you there. Simple.

Competitive. No licensing. Since everything is included.

Tintri

They have All Flash arrays if people are concerned about Hybrid performance.

The support is the major factor in choosing Nimble and the performance has been great in all our Mix Load environments.